When I was a kid, calling someone a “Neanderthal” was an insult. It implied that you were a primitive, ugly, stupid non-human that should really just die out and be rediscovered and named in Germany in the 1850s. Thanks to scientific and anthropological advances in the past 20 years, though, such insults really aren’t all that accurate anymore.

Since I was fairly young (pre-teens, certainly, although I can’t put an exact date on it), I have been fascinated by mythologies of all types. The earliest ones I was exposed to were the Greek and Roman myths, quickly followed by Egyptian stories and Norse sagas. Thanks to growing up in Oklahoma, I also got lots of early exposure to Native American stories, particularly ones from the Kiowa tribe. Reading stories like the Epic of Gilgamesh and learning more and more about comparative mythology was a critical step in my road to embracing a naturalistic worldview.

It should come as no surprise to my regular readers that I a) am a clinical psychologist and b) despise pseudoscientific nonsense. As such, when I come across woo in my field, I feel a special fire begin to burn deep inside me and it’s not because I missed taking my Pepcid. No, it’s from having the field I have devoted the past 16 years of my life to dragged through the mud and made to look silly by those who are not actually practicing evidence-based psychology.